Two years on, still more questions than answers about pipeline sabotage
Nord Stream: hide-and-seek deep under the Baltic sea
On 26 September 2022 four explosions shook the seabed near the Danish island of Bornholm. For several days, huge quantities of methane pumped into the Baltic from three damaged sections of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, which connected Russia to Germany. Europe quickly felt the impact, with energy prices rising sharply, particularly in Germany. Nord Stream, which cost more than €10bn to build, was not exclusively owned by Russia’s Gazprom; it also had shareholders in Germany (E.ON and Wintershall), the Netherlands (Gasunie) and France (Engie), all entitled to seek compensation.
The pipeline attack was the largest act of sabotage in recent European history as well as an environmental disaster. But in spite of its scope and significance, two years on, official investigations have been marked by a notable lack of urgency. To date, there have been no arrests, and no interrogations of, or charges against, suspects.
In early June, German prosecutors issued a European arrest warrant for Volodymyr Zhuravlov, a Ukrainian citizen resident in Poland. But Warsaw’s unwillingness to provide administrative assistance enabled Zhuravlov to escape without even being interviewed (1). Showing uncharacteristic casualness about counterterrorism, Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk, darling of European liberals, took the German authorities to task on 17 August on X: ‘To all the initiators and patrons of Nord Stream 1 and 2. The only thing you should do today about it is apologise and keep quiet.’
Soon after the explosions, the Swedish and Danish authorities took the view that only a state actor could have pulled off such an attack, but later they unexpectedly closed their investigations without publishing any results. Immediately after the attack, the US also announced it was launching investigations, which seemed particularly promising as their intelligence services have comprehensive oversight of the Baltic. Yet they too have divulged no findings.
At the same time, Western countries have systematically declined Russia’s repeated offers to participate in the investigation. Germany’s investigations are ongoing, but in response to parliamentary questions, the government has said any disclosure of information would be detrimental to the ‘wellbeing of the state’ (Staatswohl) – a coded way of intimating that friendly countries or intelligence services might be implicated.
A wall of silence
Investigative journalists and members of the German parliament have said that their inquiries have encountered a wall of silence. Holger Stark, from the weekly Die Zeit, spoke of ‘brutal pressure on all authorities not to talk to any journalists’ (2). In an interview with Le Monde diplomatique, Social Democratic deputy Ralf Stegner expressed surprise that two years on from such a serious crime, committed in one of the world’s most closely monitored seas, investigations have produced so little information. And Andrej Hunko of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) has spoken of a ‘provocative disinterest in shedding light on’ what happened.
There are three theories about who carried out the attack. In the immediate aftermath, some government politicians and leading Western media blamed Russia. ‘They’re the only ones with a motive who’re capable of doing it,’ France Inter’s geopolitics specialist Pierre Haski said on the country’s most-listened-to radio station (28 September 2022). However, the German and Swedish authorities have repeatedly stated that they have no evidence corroborating Russian involvement. CIA director William Burns, who is unlikely to give Moscow the benefit of the doubt, agrees, as did the Washington Post after a lengthy investigation (3). Among the obscure motives that might have driven Russia to destroy a costly infrastructure project in which it holds a 51% stake, the suggestion that Moscow might have been trying to avoid penalties for suspended deliveries is unconvincing: given the sanctions and seized Russian assets, it’s unlikely to have paid up.
If Russia invades again, then there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it. I promise we canJoe Biden
A second theory was put forward on 8 February last year by journalist Seymour Hersh, known for his revelations about US war crimes in Vietnam and Iraq. Hersh posted a detailed article on Substack blaming the US and Norway; according to his single source, the Biden administration commissioned the attack (4).
A month later, on 7 March, the New York Times presented a third theory, based on anonymous testimony from ‘US officials who have been briefed on … classified intelligence and matters of sensitive diplomacy’ (5): the sabotage was the work not of the US but of a ‘pro-Ukrainian group’. Simultaneously, a consortium of German media led by Die Zeit dug deeper, taking as their starting point information from Germany’s federal prosecutor among others. Their investigation identified a yacht allegedly chartered by the saboteurs. Since then, major Western media publications have almost exclusively focused on this narrative: the 15-metre Andromeda supposedly set sail from the German port of Rostock in September 2022 with five men and one woman on board, heading towards Bornholm. There, the divers supposedly mined the pipelines at a depth of 80 metres. German investigators reported that in January 2023 they had detected residues of the explosive HMX – a substance also found at the site of the explosion – on the yacht’s table, which the crew had failed to clean.
When this story broke, it immediately raised questions: could such a small vessel have carried out an operation on this scale and transported the tonnes of explosives that initial expert reports said would have been needed? Wouldn’t diving so deep have required a decompression chamber, which the Andromeda could not accommodate? Since then, a private expedition to the scene of the attack by Swedish engineer Erik Andersson and journalist Jeffrey Brodsky (6) has answered some of these questions.
Answers… and still more questions
First, analysis of detailed underwater photographs shows it might have needed less than 50 kilos of explosive to destroy the pipeline. Second, highly trained professionals could undertake such dives without a decompression chamber, though this would make it a riskier and lengthier operation. But why, Brodsky wondered, would divers without a decompression chamber choose to mine the pipes at a depth of 80 metres when a nearby section of Nord Stream lies at less than 40 metres? And why was one of the explosive devices placed 75km from the other three (7)? Despite many remaining unanswered questions, the Andromeda cannot be ruled out of involvement in the operation.
But whether due to diabolical ingenuity on the part of the culprits or a European desire not to know, traces of the presumed saboteurs are still lost in the fog. False passports used to rent the Andromeda led to a Ukrainian soldier and a Polish shell company funded by a Ukrainian entrepreneur known as Rustem A. Other leads point to Ukrainian diving instructor Volodymyr Zhuravlov and other suspects. But none have been questioned, and German investigators have not requested judicial cooperation from Ukraine.
Worse still, the German authorities even indirectly facilitated the suspect’s escape by failing to add his name to the Schengen register, which lists individuals subject to European arrest warrants. ‘Polish border guards neither had the information nor the reason to arrest him since he was not listed as wanted,’ a spokesperson for the Polish prosecutor’s office said (8).
According to a CIA report quoted in the Washington Post (11 November 2023), the pipeline attack was masterminded by Ukrainian special operations officer Roman Chervinsky and former commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces Valerii Zaluzhnyi, currently Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK. This document emphasised that President Zelensky was unaware of the project. However, this August the Wall Street Journal, using anonymous Ukrainian sources, reported that Zelensky had given his approval before attempting – unsuccessfully – to stop the operation in response to US pressure (9).
The West’s lack of concern over whether Ukraine, armed and financed by the US and Europe, might have launched a terrorist attack against one of its own allies raises questions: are political forces stalling the investigations for fear they might reach geopolitically unpalatable conclusions that could weaken support for Ukraine?
One step further
James Bamford, a renowned American investigative reporter and intelligence specialist, has taken this line of reasoning one step further. He believes it’s almost inconceivable that such a complex operation could be carried out without the knowledge of the US intelligence services (10). First, because the US and Ukrainian services are just as closely intertwined as their military structures. And second, because the US maintains comprehensive surveillance of the Baltic Sea through the Integrated Undersea Surveillance System (IUSS), set up in tandem with Sweden. The National Security Agency’s signals intelligence system (SIGINT) closely monitors Ukrainian military and government communications. Despite announcing its own investigation, Washington has so far provided no data.
According to Die Welt (14 December 2023), US citizens – presumably working for the intelligence services – took part in the inspection of the Andromeda by local border guards during a stopover in Kòlbrzég, Poland, on 19 September 2022. The Polish authorities have refused to say more and claim that surveillance footage from the port no longer exists. The lack of cooperation from Poland, a staunch opponent of Nord Stream, raises questions about whether it’s actively involved in a cover-up or even took part in operation planning.
According to the Washington Post (6 June 2023), the CIA knew about Ukraine’s plan to blow up the pipelines as early as June 2022 and informed some of its European partners, including Germany. If these sources are reliable, Western governments knowingly concealed from the public that their ally was the prime suspect in the largest act of industrial sabotage in recent history. The Wall Street Journal (14 June 2023) cites anonymous US officials alleging the CIA tried at the time to dissuade Ukraine.
No independent source supports this claim. Andersson sees it as an attempt by Washington to establish so-called ‘plausible deniability’. He and Brodsky believe that if the Andromeda was indeed involved in the crime, the US gave the green light for the operation at very least; otherwise, the Ukrainian saboteurs would have run too great a risk of being detected by US surveillance – with potentially disastrous consequences for relations with the West. Andersson and Brodsky do not rule out active US participation in the planning. Previous plots to blow up the pipelines, dating back to 2014 and allegedly involving ‘Western experts’, according to the Wall Street Journal (14 August 2024), seem to support their view.
The question of the role the US might have played brings us back to the second theory, put forward by Hersh. In December 2021, he claims, US president Joe Biden tasked the CIA with developing a plan to destroy the pipelines in the event of Russia invading Ukraine. In June 2022, his theory goes, specialist US Navy divers placed explosives, using the annual NATO manoeuvres in the Baltic (Baltops) as cover. In September, Biden allegedly gave the order to detonate the devices remotely by acoustic signal.
After its publication in February 2023, Hersh’s article was either ignored or dismissed as a conspiracy theory by the Western press. The main criticism levelled by the few journalists who bothered to assess it was that it relied on a single anonymous source – like most of his major revelations. In the case of Nord Stream, he was even able to present a key piece of testimony: on 7 February 2022 President Biden told a joint White House press conference with Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz that ‘if Russia invades again, then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.’ He added with a smile, ‘I promise you we will be able to do it.’ And after the attacks, US Under-Secretary of State Victoria Nuland told a Senate hearing, ‘The US government is very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now … a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea’ (11).
US interest in disabling the pipelines
Both geopolitically and economically, it’s beyond doubt that Washington had an interest in putting these pipelines out of action. The US disapproved of increasing Eurasian integration, especially the liaison between Germany’s high-tech industries and Russia’s vast resources. Furthermore, according to Hersh, Washington was concerned that Russia could use the natural gas as leverage to restrict German support for Ukraine. The sabotage was intended to remove that option. On the economic front, the US had long been pressuring the Europeans to buy liquefied US gas instead of Russian gas.
Some politicians and Western media blamed Russia for the attack. ‘They’re the only ones with a motive for doing it,’ says Pierre Haski
But is there any evidence supporting Hersh’s narrative? It was specifically to answer this question that Andersson undertook his expedition. While he at first subscribed to Hersh’s theory, he now finds the Andromeda hypothesis equally plausible, though he has not ruled out that Hersh may ultimately be proved right. Andersson’s detailed analysis of open-source intelligence (OSINT), for example, discovered that the positions of US warships and aircraft were consistent with Hersh’s account (12), contrary to earlier OSINT analyses. Andersson also rejects the accusation that Hersh was wrong about the type of explosive. The C-4 explosive mentioned by Hersh can actually contain the chemical derivative HMX in addition to the main component RDX. Hersh’s theory that two bombs were placed on each tube – a total of eight – might also be confirmed: in their legal dispute with the Nord Stream AG consortium, the insurers Lloyd’s and Arch argue that a fifth explosion took place in addition to the four previously known blasts (13). This could indicate that there were actually two bombs on each tube, contrary to previous assumptions, but only five of them went off (14).
Even though Hersh’s theory has not been disproved, Holger Stark, who heads Die Zeit’s investigation team, believes he is wrong, as no investigation results have so far corroborated his claims. Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of news platforms The Intercept and Drop Site News, has suggested two possible links between Hersh’s scenario and the Andromeda one. First, Hersh’s source may have known of a plan that was ultimately abandoned and replaced by another – a theory that Andersson also considers plausible. Another possibility: the Andromeda’s journey was part of a complex diversion operation. Steven Aftergood, who led the Federation of American Scientists’ research programme on covert US government operations from 1991 to 2021, calls the dissemination of false narratives to mask an operation an ‘established practice in military operations and intelligence activities, where it is often known as “cover and deception” ’ (15).
The intent to deceive?
Scahill notes that leaving explosive residue on the table is ‘either unbelievably sloppy tradecraft, evidence of total amateurism, or an intentional “clue” left with the intent to deceive’. That the perpetrators of the attack didn’t have time to erase their traces from the boat, as Stark supposed, seems unlikely given that its voyage lasted several weeks. And the Andromeda had not been used for four months before it was examined by investigators, long enough to erase clues – or plant them. But at this stage, there’s no tangible evidence supporting the ‘cover and deception’ hypothesis, which is also defended by Hersh.
The Nord Stream attack thus remains an unsolved crime. This being so, German parliamentarians from Die Linke and other parties are demanding an independent commission of inquiry, which could operate under the auspices of the UN Security Council. However, a resolution calling for this, presented by Russia with backing from China and Brazil, failed to gain the support of the US and its partners. Germany and Sweden have consistently rejected the idea of such a commission, purportedly so as not to interfere with ongoing investigations. Their desire to avoid disclosure is understandable: if evidence established that the Ukrainian president or even the US government was responsible for the attack, the geopolitical consequences would be unpredictable and potentially disastrous, including for NATO. And so the game of hide-and-seek around the most explosive criminal act of our time goes on.
Fabian Scheidler
(1) Bojan Pancevski, ‘Nord Stream revelations ignite dispute between US allies’, The Wall Street Journal, New York, 20 August 2024.
(2) ‘Eine verminte Recherche – Wer sprengte die Nord-Stream-Pipelines?’ (A hazardous investigation – Who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines?), round-table discussion at Netzwerk Recherche, Hamburg, 16 June 2023, recorded by TideTV.
(3) Bojan Pancevski, Drew Hinshaw, Joe Parkinson and Warren P Strobel, ‘US warned Ukraine not to attack Nord Stream’, The Wall Street Journal, 14 June 2023, and Shane Harris, John Hudson, Missy Ryan and Michael Birnbaum, ‘No conclusive evidence Russia is behind Nord Stream attack’, The Washington Post, 21 December 2022.
(4) Seymour Hersh, ‘How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline’, Substack, 8 February 2023.
(5) Adam Entous, Julian E Barnes and Adam Goldman, ‘Intelligence suggests pro-Ukrainian group sabotaged pipelines, US officials say’, The New York Times, 7 March 2023.
(6) Erik Andersson, ‘A trip to the Nord Stream blast sites’, Substack, 28 June 2023.
(7) Jeffrey Brodsky, ‘What is and what isn’t known about the Nord Stream sabotage’, Substack, 30 November 2023.
(8) ‘Erster Haftbefehl wegen Nord-Stream-Anschlägen’ (First arrest warrants for Nord Stream attacks), Tagesschau, 14 August 2024.
(9) Bojan Pancevski, ‘A drunken evening, a rented yacht: The real story of the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage’, The Wall Street Journal, 14 August 2024.
(10) ‘Intercepted: The biggest whodunnit of the century’, The Intercept, 17 May 2023, and James Bamford, ‘The Nord Stream explosions: New revelations about motive, means, and opportunity’, The Nation, New York, 5 May 2023.
(11) ‘Just in: Ted Cruz confronts top Biden official over Nord Stream 2 decision’, available on YouTube, 26 January 2023.
(12) Erik Andersson, ‘Aircraft and vessels in Seymour Hersh’s Nord Stream story’, Substack, 22 May 2023.
(13) High Court of Justice, London, Amended Defence, 30 September 2024.
(14) Erik Andersson, ‘A fifth Nord Stream bomb’, Substack, 6 October 2024.
(15) Jeremy Scahill, ‘Conflicting reports thicken Nord Stream bombing plot’, The Intercept, 10 March 2023.